【演講】Stefania Travagnin：Picturing History: Models of Cross-strait Lineage Construction for Taiwanese Buddhism
2015年3月5日（週四）19:00-21:00
Room 116, Russell Square: College Buildings, SOAS, University of London(SOAS University of London,10 Thornhaugh Street,Russell Square,London,WC1H 0XG,UK)
主辦單位：
Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS
Dr. Stefania Travagnin（University of Groningen）
E-mail: bc18@soas.ac.uk
內容簡介：
A Buddhist monastery is a structure of several buildings, some more visible and visited than others. The less visible buildings, this research argues, offer crucial data on the micro-history of the resident community. The Fuhui Pagoda (fuhui tayuan 福慧塔院) is one of those less visible and less visited parts of the Fuyan complex in Xinzhu, but the study of its configuration and development are essential to better understand how the Fuyan monastic community is creating its own retrospective micro-history. That micro-history then becomes a core agent in unwrapping and disclosing the contextual macro-history.
This paper will propose a study of the Fuhui Pagoda that draws on concepts such as discursive identity, religious authority, and the visual making of a cross-strait lineage.
A Buddhist pagoda is important because it contributes to ‘historicize’ religious figures. The ‘historicized’ figures that we find in the Fuhui Pagoda are faces and voices of the new Taiwanese Buddhism, they constitute a new retrospective lineage that is challenged by cross-strait relations and the effect of the Japanese colonial period. Therefore, the Fuhui Pagoda is the attempt of a Taiwanese community to re-elaborate its history and lineage within the macro-context of East Asian Buddhism.
This sacred place is a centre of rituals, proposes precise dispositions of portraits, and is decorated not just with flowers and incense but with verses as well. Ceremonies, arrangements of icons and written messages frame patterns and identity of a lineage, a school, and a tradition. The interlocking between written texts, visual culture and performative practices that takes place within the pagoda leads to the question of how discursive identity and religious authority are constructed and enacted.
Speaker's Bio
Stefania Travagnin is Assistant Professor of Religion in Asia, and Director of the newly established Centre for the Study of Religion and Culture in Asia in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen. The Centre offers a venue for scholars from various institutions in the world to exchange views, combine different methodologies and approaches, revise and innovate theories and methods in the field, and contribute to produce interdisciplinary academic scholarship. Within the Centre, Dr. Travagnin coordinates three research projects: Textuality in East Asian Buddhism; Religion and Media in East Asia (in association with Dr. Erica Baffelli, University of Manchester); and Critical Methods and Concepts for the Study of Religion in Modern China (in association with Dr. Scott Pacey, University of Nottingham).
Dr. Travagnin holds a BA and MA in Chinese Studies from Ca’Foscari University (Venice, Italy), and a PhD in the Study of Religions from SOAS; she has been visiting scholar at the Center for Chinese Studies of the National Central Library and at the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica in Taipei, has extensive fieldwork experience within several Buddhist communities in East Asia, and has previously taught at the University of London (SOAS and Goldsmiths College), University of Missouri, University of Saskatchewan, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Manchester.
Dr. Travagnin’s interdisciplinary research explores different levels and forms of engagement between religion – especially Buddhism – and modernity in Chinese and Taiwanese social contexts. Her publications question how modern Buddhist China is re-interpreting and adapting classical scriptures, doctrines, and rituals in light of contemporary ideologies; the intervention of politics into the religious sphere; how Chinese religions participate in the current debate on religious diversity and pluralism; the development of Buddhist education in China and Taiwan; the effects of mediated religions and religious media including cyber-Buddhist activities.
【演講】Liu Hong：In Search of a New Migration Order: The Chinese Experience in a Global and Comparative Perspective
2015年3月18日（週三）13:00-14:00
Richards Building, Room 213, The University of Queensland(The University of Queensland,St Lucia Qld 4072,Australia)
主辦單位：
Research Cluster for Chinese Entrepreneurial Studies Public Lecture
Professor Liu Hong
黎志剛教授，E-mail: c.lai@uq.edu.au
內容簡介：
Existing scholarship of patterns of global migration has been fundamentally shaped by the Western experiences, and it tends to be conceptualized at the time of nation-state, the ascendance of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, and methodological nationalism. The past three decades have witnessed some significant changes that are reshaping the international migration order. One is the accelerated pace of global migration which has been facilitated by the advancement in modern technology and telecommunication. Another phenomenon is the rapid rise of China as the second largest economy in the world and a major source of emigration (while also increasingly attracting immigration to its own soil). The recently launched state initiative constructing “One Belt and One Road” by the new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping has added new momentum to the changing landscapes of global Chinese migration.
This presentation will analyze how these recent transformations have (re)shaped the dynamics, patterns and characteristics of Chinese international migration which in turn provides new insights for an understanding of the evolving global migration order.
About the Speaker
Liu Hong, Tan Kak Kee Endowed Professor of Asian Studies Chair, School of Humanities and Social Sciences Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Princeton University, Jones Hall, Room 202(202 Jones Hall,Princeton, NJ 08544,USA)
主辦單位：
East Asian Studies Program, Princeton University
Dr. Hugh Clark（Professor of History & East Asian Studies, Ursinus College）
內容簡介：
The diverse lands south of the Yangtze River lay outside the empire’s cultural heartland long after the assertion of political authority by the Qin empire in the late 3rd century BCE. In the eyes of northern elites who authored the written record, the cultures of the South were considered inferior, “barbaric,” and unworthy of either imitation or engagement. Nevertheless over the course of the 1st millennium CE North and South were increasingly engaged with and familiar with each other.
For centuries if not millennia the standard narrative has presumed that northern culture, the so-called “Confucian” culture overwhelmed and transformed the South, displacing indigenous culture and converting the South into something more nearly akin to the North.
In the present paper the author argues for a different outcome. Through examination of the roots of three cults indigenous to southern Fujian province: the Maternal Ancestress (Mazu), the Great Life-Protecting Lord (Baosheng dadi), and the Lord of Manifest Kindness (Xianhui hou), the author argues that pre-sinitic southern culture had a profound impact on sinitic culture, one that continues to resonate throughout Chinese culture even to the present.
The goal is to challenge the “Confucian” cultural model and a new perspective on what “Chinese culture” means.
※本演講原訂於2月18日舉辦，延期至4月2日。
